Release for PC, PS4, and Xbox One: June 4, 2019

Developers: ZeniMax Online Studios

Publishers: Bethesda Softworks

Genre: MMORPG

Before I delve into my take on ESO’s newest Elsweyr Chapter, I think it is prudent to share my history with the Elder Scrolls Series. The game that first made me the avid gamer I am today is the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I played it and loved it. From there I played them backwards through Oblivion and parts of Morrowind. I love the franchise and the lore of the world. ESO was no different. I loved it from the moment I started playing it. A lot of hard core Elder Scrolls fans might disagree by saying it is too different from the other games in the franchise. To that I say, go play any MMO. It is a different beast. You have to create more zones, more content, more quests, more everything. All of this is to say, I am not going into this review biased against Elder Scrolls Online. However, I am not going to go easy on it either.

I originally purchased this game back in 2014 for the PC. I picked it up again when Morrowind launched, skipped Summerset, and tried to pick it up again for Elsweyr. However, I almost couldn’t write this review due to the insurmountable issues playing on the PC (directly though ZeniMax, not on Steam) presents. There is a known issue in which not all files are downloaded correctly from their website. This can lead to endless hours of uninstalling, reinstalling, and failed attempts to “repair” the launcher. If you can finally get into the game you may run into the issue I did in which there is no sound other than the sound of weapon swings. After noticing this I tried a few fixes and then just decided to uninstall/reinstall the game. That was when I ran into the most problems. At this point I couldn’t get into the game at all. No matter how many times I tried to use the “repair” function in the launcher, I could not get the game completely installed.

I decided it was time to seek  outside help. I contacted ZeniMax customer support and after an hour or so of proving that my computer could handle the game and this was not a problem on my end, I was told that this is a known issue in which internet service providers block files that they think are suspect. I couldn’t help but think that if no other game has this problem then it is probably not an internet service provider issue, it’s a ZeniMax Online Studios issue. They told me this was not something they could fix and I could try getting a VPN (which cost money or are a virus risk if they are free). That was not going to happen so I asked for a full refund for my Elswery pre-purchase and every purchase I had made since 2014 including in game Crown Store purchases. I told them I still wanted to play their game, but I would be re-purchasing everything on the PS4. To my surprise they agreed to do it. They told me it may take ten business days to complete so I waited, but it never came. I opened another ticket and they made me the same promises. I did receive the refund for the pre-purchase, but that was it. So for a third time I opened a ticket and they again made the same promises. This was about four months ago. Still no refund. At this point I don’t expect it to come and will have to cope with the loss.

All of this is to say, if you are going to play this game, play on a console. I re-purchased it on the PS4 and the game has worked flawlessly.

Elsweyr is one of the best new chapters in the game thus far. At no point did I get bored and need to hop on another character to take a break. This is most likely because everything felt rewarding. The side quest structure was similar to other zones where you complete the quest for an area and the icon on your map turns white telling you what you accomplished there. What Elsweyr does better than previous chapters is set all the side locations on a road that the main quest is leading you down. You can do them as you go and never feel overwhelmed with quests or like you are straying too far from the main quest line. In the Summerset chapter, quests were sporadically thrown across the map and you could find yourself riding across the entire zone continue the quest because you don’t have the wayshrine there yet.

Another thing that felt slightly smoother were delves. They were far less cluttered than some in the past and you almost always had a quest reason to be in them. In past chapters (*cough* *cough* Summerset), developers seemed to forget that delves are meant to be playable solo. So filling them with hordes of monsters isn’t very considerate.  Though I think the most rewarding thing that happened to me while playing though this chapter was being one shot killed by Fus Ro Dah.

There were a number of positives in this expansion, and number of negatives. But, the new Necromancer class struck me as just meh. Somewhere between the two. It was fun, but it was exactly what we would expect from an Elder Scrolls Necromancer class. It didn’t break any molds. Leading up to its release, we were led to believe it would have a huge impact on your gameplay experience because you could use the bodies of the dead as a source of strength and you could be arrested for revealing yourself as a Necromancer near a guard by using abilities. Well, bodies don’t tend to pile up that much and I was never in a situation where I needed to use my abilities in front of guards. So the class wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either.

I don’t mind being killed by a dragon, but being killed by dunerippers angered me to no end. If I am mounted, sprinting though a valley, and purposely sidestepping these monsters, I should be fine right? No. Somehow, they can way to easily knock you off your mount. They can also be difficult to kill for a level one Necromancer, especially if they call in their buddies from over the hill and are now a pack of four angry monsters who can go underground and become invulnerable whenever they want. They are a bit overpowered in my opinion, and very annoying.

Speaking of annoying, the new tutorial didn’t quite live up to its predecessors. For one thing. The first person you ever speak to in Elsweyr, Zamarak, has messed up animations. His mouth doesn’t move for his first lines of dialogue. Talk about a bad first impression of the chapter. I did roll a few new characters just to see if it was a consistent issue, and it was. The rest of the tutorial was no better. It lacked anything to fight until the end. The first fight you have is to test whether you are fully recovered. The fight forces you to repeat all the fighting mechanics three times. Three times in which to witness the terrible animation. If you use a heavy attack after blocking you can knock your opponent to the ground. But in this case, he would fall to the ground as soon as you start to charge the attack, glitch back to a standing position, and then glitch back the ground all before you had even hit him. As they made you do this three times, I can safely say it was a consistent issue. Normally things like this would just make the player laugh, but this might be the first thing a new player to the game is seeing. ZeniMax is not putting its best foot forward here.  However, the technical issues are mostly isolated to this tutorial. The only other issue of note was quest NPC’s not appearing where they are supposed to be. This caused a few headaches of thinking I was in the wrong spot, but actually the NPC just hadn’t phased in yet.

One thing other MMOs do better than ESO are quality of life changes with every expansion like World of Warcraft’s new portal room and Final Fantasy XIV’s glamour wardrobe. ESO needs to pick up on this trend. In the crown store there are bundles you can buy of rewards you would have gotten for pre-ordering the digital deluxe edition of Summerset. I got the digital deluxe edition but not the pre-order, so I had most of the things in the package except for one item. To get that item, however, I would have had to pay full price for everything in the bundle instead of getting a discount for already owning most of it. Also, quest icons for quests you have already picked up should be different from those that you have not picked up. Otherwise it is impossible to the tell the difference on you navigation bar. Lastly, the new chapter did not come with a free new character slot. I had to buy one in order to make my necromancer. If you come out with a new class, you should give everyone a character slot for free.

-spoiler warning from this point on-

What Elsweyr seemed to struggle with most was its narrative, which is rare for a Bethesda game. It couldn’t seem to decide who the true enemy was, and it had you fight all of them the exact same way: Defeat the Usurper Queen, but her Necromancer gets away. Defeat the Necromancer, but he succeeds in resurrecting the Betrayer. Defeat the Betrayer but he succeeds in helping the Dragons. Defeat one of the Dragons but the other one is definitely still alive and will definitely be back to kill us later. It simply felt very repetitive and like there were two many things happening in a very short span of time.

To make matters worse, the story did not have the epic feel that the developers were clearly trying to achieve and I think the issues go right to the core of how the game is set up. For whatever reason the Elder Scrolls franchise has always shied away from the use of in game cut scenes. The majority of the narrative was told though direct dialogue with characters and some dialogue in the world that could easily be missed if you walk too far away. There are moments in this chapter that are supposed to be epic and grand but just fall flat. The battle for Riverhold is one of these instances. We are led to believe that Queen Euraxia is sending everything she has to attack Riverhold, there are multiple quests prior to her army’s arrival where you are simply preparing for the battle such as gathering the citizens within the walls and helping Cadwell set traps. This creates the feeling that this battle is gonna be huge and we are about the get slaughtered. I will also give credit where it is due in that the battle was one of the first instanced scenarios we’ve seen in ESO. It wasn’t in the open world and the city was altered for the sake of the battle. But it wasn’t taken advantage of. The “army” was a handful of Euraxians and Necromancers fighting NPCs in various locations around the town. The player character doesn’t arrive back in town until the “battle” is well underway. All you really do is show up and shoot a dragon who is conveniently sitting on a house waiting to be shot. But the most underwhelming thing of all happens directly after the battle.

All I can say is thank goodness I was playing though this with my partner or I would have missed it all together. After the battle, Khamira reveals that she is the long lost daughter of the King and Queen, making her the heir to the Rimmen Throne. I had walked too far away to hear this juicy tid bit but I heard it on my partner’s TV because he was messing around in his bags. What the hell Zenimax! One of the biggest reveals of the expansion can be unintentionally missed? Nobody sits around to listen to NPCs talk to each other after a battle!

This isn’t the last time Khamira gets the short end of the narrative stick. She has two rather important moments in the Throne room after her reveal. One in which she holds a war council to decide our next move against the remaining threats and the other when she is crowned Queen. Both of these are un-instanced. There are players running in every direction, sorcerer and warden pets standing on top of Khamira, and people performing very noisy spells just for fun. Its like ZeniMax forgot this was an MMO. These epic and awe inspiring moments are ruined by the way they are presented to us. These should have been cut scenes or at the very least a solo instance free from annoying players who don’t care about the story.

Don’t get me wrong. The story of this chapter is one of the best yet. It is just the way in which it was told that causes concern and not everything is as fleshed out as it should be. Abnur Tharn is the reason the dragons have returned, and his sister is the usurper Queen, so why in a million years would the Khajiit trust him? There are several passing remarks on this in dialogue, but none seem to explain his presence. There are also just places where the writing is lazy. In the tutorial almost every character you encounter says, “Its not every day someone survives a dragon attack,” at least twice. In the Merryvale Farms quest line you rescue a father and his three daughters. All four of them have the same set dialogue lines that you have to click through the advance the quest. Lastly, I had high hopes for the integration of the necromancer class in the game especially after one of the first quests I did had me tell an NPC that I was a Necromancer. But this was the only time it ever came up. Throughout the rest of the game, story characters throw a lot of shade at Necromancy, all the while ignoring the fact that you are one. They also call you an outsider even if you are playing as a Khajiit. Things like this need to be integrated into the game, considering the RPG element is the game’s backbone.

Finally, what sealed the fate of this game in my mind was the time gated Southern Elsweyr content. Pelletine will not be available until November of this year as a zone DLC, meaning it is not considered part of the Elsweyr chapter. For this reason I am not including it in this review. While I like the new approach to spreading out content, this can be done through post expansion patches, as proven by World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. All of Elsweyr should have been accessible at launch, considering the chapter isn’t called Anequina. As a subscriber, I don’t have to pay for DLC content, but if those who don’t subscribe have to pay for the Dragonhold DLC, the company will prove it only split the two up for the profits. However, I still hold out hope that Dragonhold will be free for everyone who owns the Elsweyr chapter. It would be like making World of Warcraft players pay to go to Argus or Nazjatar, which were additional zones added to the game during an expansion as bonus content.

The Elsweyr chapter is a mixed bag. It has its great moments, but they are currently being overshadowed by its pitfalls. In my opinion the following feedback items would go a long way to correcting this chapter’s path:

1. More focus on the way the story is told, either through solo instanced areas when conversations happen, or actual cutscenes using in game graphics.
2. Entire zone at launch. What we got is not an expansion by MMO standards. It was a patch at best.
3. Give players something to work toward in endgame. I know this game’s “Tamriel Unlimited” makes its endgame different, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have one.
4. Quality of life changes such as bundle discounts for already owned items, differing quest icons for main scenario quests, and additional character slots when new classes are added to the game.
5. More attention to the player character. We need to be recognized for what we are. Not all Khajiit players consider themselves outsiders, and don’t talk crap about Necromancers to someone playing as a Necromancer.

Overall this chapter was enjoyable, but it was simply missing most of things that make an MMORPG great. This rank is specifically for the Elsweyr chapter and its content, or lack there of. I love the Elder Scrolls series and I love MMOs but this chapter did not live up to either. I give Elsweyr the rank of: